Serial killer wants jury to give him death

Serial killer asks his jury for deathUnusual request comes as the panel braces for evidence of 3 more slayings and several rapes

ANDREW TILGHMAN, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Saturday, October 23, 2004

Admitted serial killer Anthony Allen Shore is hoping to save his soul, but he wants the state of Texas to take his life.

"He believes it's time for him to sacrifice his life for what he has done," defense attorney Alvin Nunnery told jurors as the penalty phase of the capital murder trial began Friday.

Shore, 42, wiped away a tear and sniffled after his attorney explained his highly unusual request for a death sentence. He has instructed his lawyers not to cross-examine witnesses or make any other effort to persuade jurors to give him a life sentence for the strangling of at least four females over a nine-year span, Nunnery said.

"He's accepted the Lord into his life. He understands that while he would ultimately be free from the pain and penalty of sin — that is, eternal damnation — he has to pay the consequences for what he did," Nunnery said.

Jurors on Thursday convicted Shore of capital murder in the death of 21-year-old Maria Del Carmen Estrada, who was sexually assaulted, strangled with a nylon cord and left dead behind a fast-food restaurant in April 1992.

As the punishment phase began, jurors were bracing for evidence that he killed three additional females and raped several others, including two preteen girls in his own family.

Several jurors appeared horrified, with their hands covering their faces, when listening to testimony from one woman who said Shore broke into her family's home in 1993 when she was 14, tied her up and raped her.

"He could pick up an instrument he's never seen before and play it like he's been playing it his whole life," Belt said.

But Belt did not ask the jury to have mercy on her brother.

"I and the rest of my family believe that he should have the death penalty," she said in court.

Shore, a former telephone repairman and wrecker driver, was arrested last year after new DNA tests on scrapings found underneath Estrada's fingernails. Shore's DNA was on file because he pleaded guilty in 1998 to molesting the girls in his family.

Officers' fears

Details also emerged about Shore's first known killing, the 1986 death of 15-year-old
Laurie Lee Tremblay
. Shore told police he offered her a ride to school one morning, then strangled her and left her dead behind a restaurant.

Privately, detectives were deeply troubled by the Tremblay death. None of her jewelry was taken, meaning it was not a robbery, said Sgt. John Swain, a Houston police detective who investigated Tremblay's death.

"We knew we had a serial killer working," Swain said. "I think that the Police Department danced around that. The powers that be didn't want to admit that, didn't want the public to panic."

After a search of Shore's garage and storage unit last year, detectives found several large collages on cardboard matting, compiled from tiny magazine cutouts of girls, lips and breasts, police said. They also found a black wig and a large box filled with pornographic magazines.